Mistress (36 page)

“Thank you.” Hannah blew her nose and risked an anguished look at her stony-faced spouse. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bright. I never meant for this to happen. Marcus was right. I could not conceal the truth forever from my husband.”

“What truth? What the devil is going on here?” Sands looked at Marcus, his face twisted with rage and pain. “And don’t give me any more rubbish about taking one of Hardstaff’s treatments, damn your eyes.”

“Hannah is the only one who can tell you the truth,” Marcus said. “I have given her my word that I would keep her secrets.”

“What secrets do you share with my wife?” Sands exploded. “Did you trick her into coming here so that you could seduce her in that brothel bed over there?”

“No,” Marcus said calmly.

“Of course he did not do any such thing.” Iphiginia straightened and glowered at Sands. “Really, sir, that is
beyond anything. Masters would never seduce another man’s wife.”

Sands turned on her, his face still tight with fury. “How would you know?”

“Because I know him very, very well.” Iphiginia patted Hannah’s shoulder. “He is incapable of that sort of unprincipled behavior.”

Marcus gazed at her with an unreadable expression.

Sands eyed Iphiginia intently. “How do you come to be here tonight, Mrs. Bright?”

“I received a note, just as you did, sir,” Iphiginia said. “I arrived only moments before you and hid behind the curtain.” She swept a hand out to indicate the bed, the erotic paintings, and the statuary. “Obviously, someone intended that I discover Masters together with Lady Sands in a compromising position. I suspect you were meant to do the same.”

“Someone staged this entire affair?” Sands set his jaw. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s the only logical assumption, is it not, Masters?”

“Yes.” Marcus regarded the small group thoughtfully. “Hannah and I both received notes, too.”

“They could not have come from the blackmailer,” Iphiginia said. “Mrs. Wycherley is dead. Besides, there was no demand for money in this night’s work. Some other malicious person is behind this.”

Sands stared at each of them in turn, more frustrated than ever. “What blackmailer?”

Hannah raised her head with sad dignity. “Someone blackmailed me, my lord. We believe it was Mrs. Wycherley from the Wycherley Agency. She also blackmailed an acquaintance of Mrs. Bright’s. She was murdered by one of her other victims.”

“That was our initial conclusion,” Marcus said.

“Good Lord,” Sands whispered. He glanced at Marcus and then strode toward his wife. He pulled Hannah up into his arms. “Tell me everything, Hannah. For God’s
sake, the truth can be no worse than what I have been forced to imagine for the past fortnight.”

Hannah’s eyes filled with tears. “You will turn from me in disgust.”

“Never,” Sands vowed. “Never, my love. You cannot have done anything that will give me a disgust of you. The only way in which you could break my heart would be to turn to another.”

“Oh, Edward, I killed him.” Hannah pressed her face into his shoulder. “I shot him dead. And I do not regret the murder. I only feared your discovery of it.”

“Who did you kill?” Sands moved his hand gently on her shivering back.

“Spalding,” Hannah blurted.

Sands frowned. “Your first husband?”

“I killed him one night when he came home drunk and started to beat me. I could not endure any more of his rages.” Hannah sobbed heavily. “I could not take the never-ending fear. The cruelty. I feared for the life of any child I might bear. Oh, Edward, I was always so afraid. Only Marcus discovered the truth.”

Sands looked at Marcus over the top of Hannah’s head. “Masters? How are you involved in this? The old rumors always labeled you as the killer.”

“I walked in five minutes after she had shot him,” Marcus said evenly. “I got rid of the body for her. Tossed it into the river. Made it appear as though he had been killed by a footpad.”

“That was the least of what he did.” Hannah sniffed back tears. “He also bore the brunt of the suspicions and the gossip afterward. Everyone believed that Marcus profited from Spalding’s death. But the truth was, my husband had cheated him and many others. The investment pool they had formed was on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“I came to London that day to confront Spalding with the facts of his deceit,” Marcus explained. “I arrived late in the evening and went straight to his house on Fulston
Street. I discovered Hannah with the pistol still in her hand.”

“I was in a state of near-collapse.” Hannah looked at Sands. “Panic-stricken would be a better word. I was relieved that Spalding was dead but terrified of what would happen next. Masters took care of everything.”

“I see.” Sands gave Marcus a speculative look. “You kept quiet not only about Hannah’s involvement in Spalding’s death, but also about the financial state of the investment pool, did you not?”

“I had little choice,” Marcus admitted. “There was too much at stake.”

Hannah pushed a strand of hair back behind her ears. “If word of the instability of the pool had gotten out, there would have been panic. The investors would have sold their shares at a terrible loss. So many people would have been ruined.” She smiled wistfully. “Marcus took charge of the investment pool and salvaged everything.”

“And got very rich in the process,” Sands observed neutrally.

Marcus shrugged but offered no further explanation.

“Oh, Edward, I am so dreadfully sorry that you had to learn the truth this way,” Hannah whispered. “Marcus insisted I should tell all. He claimed it was the only way to remove the venom from the blackmailer’s fangs, but I was afraid to confide the truth to you. I loved you too much to risk turning you against me.”

“I always suspected what sort of man Spalding was.” Sands gripped her arms gently and pulled her against him. “I heard the rumors. But you know how such things are ignored by Polite Society.”

“I know,” Hannah mumbled.

“Listen to me, Hannah. I am glad that you shot him. Do you hear me? I only wish that I had had the privilege of doing so myself: If I had been acquainted with you then, I would have done so.”

“Edward.” Hannah held him more tightly.

“I told you, Hannah, there is nothing on the face of
this earth that could turn me away from you except to learn that you loved another”

“Never,”
Hannah vowed. “You are the only man I have ever loved. The only one I will ever love.”

Sands touched her hair. “Then from now on, will you also trust me?”

“Yes.” Relief and joy were mingled in Hannah’s voice. “I am so sorry that I did not tell you everything long ago.”

Sands looked at Marcus. “It would appear that I am in your debt, sir. Not only for helping Hannah that night, but for shielding her from all the questions and suspicions that ensued.”

Marcus shrugged. “It was nothing.”

Iphiginia smiled proudly. “That is Masters for you, Lord Sands. A gentleman to his fingertips.”

“It was Hannah who made me into a gentleman.” Marcus thrust his legs out in front of him and leaned back against the seat of his coach. He stared out the window into the night and thought about the past. “She taught me everything I needed to know so that I could move confidently in Society.”

“One cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” Iphiginia said. “Lady Sands may have given you a polite polish, but the truth is, you must have been born with the proper instincts for noble behavior.”

Marcus glanced at her, amused. “I was born a farmer, Iphiginia.”

She dismissed that with an airy wave of her gloved hand. “What has that got to do with it? You would be a true nobleman if you fished for a living or sold vegetables out of the back of a cart.”

He was touched by her naive faith in him. He tried to hide it behind a blandly derisive expression. “How very democratic of you. You sound like an American.”

“As far as I am concerned, the title of gentleman belongs
to those who earn it, not to those who happen to be born into the right families.”

“That is not a commonly held view.”

Her mouth curved in the shadows. “I rarely hold common views.”

Marcus grinned briefly. “I am well aware of that. It is one of your more endearing qualities.”

“Only a man who also holds uncommon views would appreciate such a quality in a female.”

“No doubt.” Marcus went back to his brooding contemplation of the night. It was a relief to be freed from the burden of Hannah’s secret, he thought. Normally such things did not bother him, but he had not liked having to keep the truth from Iphiginia. She was the first woman with whom he had ever wanted to be completely open.

Having a confidante was a new experience for him. It was a simple pleasure but a profound one.

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“What are we going to do now? Mrs. Wycherley is dead. She could not have sent those notes tonight. Who is behind this new trouble?”

Marcus brought his thoughts back to the issue at hand. “I don’t know yet, but I have a theory that whoever killed Mrs. Wycherley may have found her list of blackmail victims.”

“And that person has decided to carry on where she left off?” Iphiginia asked.

“It’s possible.”

Iphiginia frowned in concentration. “It makes no sense. By forcing the four of us into a confrontation tonight, he risked ruining the scheme. Hannah revealed her secrets to her husband. She can no longer be blackmailed.”

“Both you and Sands saw Hannah and me in a thoroughly compromising situation tonight, Iphiginia.”

“Yes, but I knew immediately that you were not
guilty of seducing Hannah. And Sands did not believe it for very long, either.”

“No one,” Marcus said very deliberately, “least of all the kind of person who is willing to pick up where a blackmailer left off, could have predicted that outcome.”

Iphiginia stared at him in surprise. “Whatever do you mean? Oh.” She wrinkled her nose. “You think that the villain assumed Lord Sands and I would believe the worst?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he was quite mistaken, was he not?”

“It was an assumption that most people would make,” Marcus said softly.

“Nonsense. Only those who do not comprehend connections based on mutual respect, intellectual affinity, and true love would be so idiotic.”

“This may come as a surprise to you, my dear, but I would venture to guess that ninety-nine percent of the populace in general, and one hundred percent of the
ton
in particular, fails to consider that such connections between men and women are even remotely possible.”

“Is that so?” Iphiginia’s gaze was startlingly direct. “How would you have reacted if you had walked into that chamber tonight and discovered me attempting to conceal the fact that a man was hiding behind the stage door?”

“I would have been bloody furious.”

“But would you have believed me if I had told you that I was innocent?”

Marcus thought about it. It came as something of a shock to realize that he would no doubt believe even the wildest explanation rather than face the possibility that Iphiginia had betrayed him. “Yes.”

Iphiginia smiled with smug satisfaction. “I knew it. You do trust me, sir, do you not?”

“Yes, but I still would have been bloody furious. Pray, do not take a notion to put the matter to the test.”

“I still do not understand what the villain hoped to
achieve by throwing us all together tonight. Any way you look at it, he was putting his future income at risk.”

Marcus was silent for a moment while he examined the conclusion he had reached earlier. “Perhaps we are now dealing with someone who gets a thrill out of malicious mischief. Whoever it is may not need the money he could make by blackmailing Mrs. Wycherley’s victims.”

“But he may enjoy exposing their secrets?”

“It’s possible. Society breeds too many dangerously bored people, any number of which might find it titillating to use the information from Mrs. Wycherley’s files to wreak havoc in the
ton.”

“Good heavens. What a terrible notion.”

“Not a pleasant one, I’ll grant you that.” Marcus had no intention of explaining the rest of his hypothesis.

What really worried him was that he had sensed a personal element about the mischief that had been produced tonight. It was almost as though someone had wanted vengeance.

Iphiginia’s eyes widened suddenly. “Aunt Zoe’s secret may be at risk again. This villain may choose to expose her past in order to create a furor.”

“It’s possible,” Marcus agreed.

“I must warn her.”

“There is nothing we can do now to stop the revelations, if that is what the villain intends.”

“Yes, I know, but poor Aunt Zoe. She will be devastated if her secret is revealed.”

“We shall see if we can locate her tonight and tell her what has happened. But it’s entirely possible the villain will take no further action for a while,” Marcus said. “He may wait to see if he achieved the desired effect from tonight’s little scene before he goes to the trouble of planning another such elaborate production.”

“Tonight’s work did take planning, did it not?”

“A considerable amount of it, I should think. Iphiginia, I’m beginning to have a few doubts about our
earlier conclusion that Mrs. Wycherley was the blackmailer.”

“But Marcus, that makes no sense. It must have been her.”

“Perhaps. But in the morning I shall attempt to do something we have been unable to do until now.”

“What is that?”

“Obtain some further facts which may establish her guilt.”

“What sort of facts?”

Marcus contemplated a passing carriage. “I shall ask my man of affairs to look into a few matters.”

“Such as?”

“Such as who owns the premises used by the proprietor of Dr. Hardstaff’s Museum.”

Iphiginia blinked. “Surely Dr. Hardstaff owns it or rents it, whichever the case may be.”

“I believe it’s safe to say that Hardstaff is very likely a
nom de guerre
of sorts,” Marcus said dryly. “It is a most uncommon name.”

Iphiginia frowned. “It is rather unusual.”

“A bit too appropriate for his line of work.”